Defining and understanding the customer profile

Ask your sales, marketing and client success teams to define a typical customer for your organization and you’ll receive at least three different answers. As I wrote last week, big data can help build your customer profile (assuming it’s good data) as well as your ideal customer profile as they may not be the same.

Data doesn’t lie – people do.

In a previous life I was an automotive CRM software trainer. As I trained various car dealerships on the software, I found myself repeating the same mantra again and again, “Garbage in, garbage out.” Meaning, if you put bad data into the system, you will have bad outcomes. The more information you can attach to a prospective or current customer, the better. Your communication can be more targeted and salespeople can work more effectively focused only on the people most likely to buy from them.

Consider this: You walk into the showroom of a Ford dealership, indicating your interest in the Fusion Hybrid. Later that day, you receive an email thanking you for coming in and inviting you to test-drive the new Explorer. Clearly, your salesperson entered your name and email address correctly into the CRM system but it appears they failed to correctly indicate which make and model you wanted information on. Would you go back to that dealership?

Data changes. Plan on it.

Every 30 minutes, 75 phone numbers and 120 business addresses change, 20 CEOs leave and 30 new businesses are formed. Data can [and will] go bad. Through active account management, support and communication you can keep your data fairly accurate. Companies like Data.com can also assist in cleaning data.

Clean data = happy sales teams

Good profile data will indicate how closely a prospect or customer matches your organization’s ideal customer profile. As a result, sales and marketing alike can tell at a glance who in your target audiences is moving forward in their relationship with your brand and who is standing still.

Right On Interactive’s lead and customer scoring capabilities enable organizations to identify quality leads and get them to the sales team. Marketing departments who utilize ROI can focus their efforts on their target audience profile “sweet spot.”

Whether it’s vice presidents or c-level executives, small businesses or Fortune 500 companies, Right On Interactive can score any data point you can capture as it relates to your ideal profile. The higher the profile score, the better the potential fit and likelihood of success for your sales team.